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Wizz Air to open regional base in Tuzla

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Wizz Air’s Tuzla base to cover Serbia and Croatia

Low cost airline Wizz Air will open a regional base for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia at Tuzla Airport from June 1, 2015, local authorities have said. The no frills carrier will base one of its aircraft in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s third largest city and operate 25 weekly flights. It expects to handle some 300.000 passengers per year. “This means they [Wizz Air] will base one to two aircraft in Tuzla, with more jobs to be created and at least two new destinations to be launched”, Mustafa Isabegović, Tuzla Canton’s Minister for Transport, said. The low cost airline launched services to the Bosnian city last summer and is the only carrier offering scheduled flights out of Tuzla. It currently serves the city from Malmo, Basel, Dortmund, Gothenburg and Eindhoven.

It is unknown whether Wizz Air’s expansion in Tuzla will affect its operations at nearby Belgrade Airport, where it also has an operational base, as well as potential flights to Croatia. The carrier’s expansion in Serbia was abruptly halted earlier this year when the airport discontinued its benefits for the airline and hiked fees. At the time, Wizz Air said Belgrade had become the most expensive airport in its destination network. However, the no frills carrier recently confirmed it was also in talks with Niš Constantine the Great Airport, in Serbia’s south-east, to launch flights to the city during the 2015 summer season. On the other hand, the airline has a limited presence in Croatia. Following a brief and unsuccessful stint in Zagreb, it now operates only seasonal flights to Split.

Over the past nine months, Tuzla Airport handled 109.160 passengers, an increase of 182.5% compared to the same period last year. Prior to Wizz Air’s arrival, the airport was mostly deserted since it opened its doors for commercial traffic in 2008. The airline’s CEO, Josef Varadi, recently said, “Introducing flights from Tuzla and increasing services later on is indicative of the strong cooperation we have and we think it is time for the next phase”. According to Bosnia's Federal Minister for Transport and Communication, Enver Bijedić, Wizz Air is considering launching flights to Sarajevo. Talks between the budget airline and Sarajevo Airport are in progress, with the carrier’s CEO indicating services from three different cities could be launched to the Bosnian capital during the 2015 summer season.

Comments

Northern Bosnia keeps on getting good news. First it was announced that Air Serbia will be increasing Banja Luka to 8 weekly from 04.04.2015 and now Wizz Air opens up a base in Tuzla! This is fantastic. Both of these airports can serve continental Croatia. I wonder if this could spell the end for Osijek airport?

What are the terms of this agreement??? Is TZL being taken to the cleaners? I know there are benefits for Tuzla but I would love to hear from an insider how much they are being squeezed by big bad Wizz.

I think it would be a really good idea if they tapped into the charter market from Tuzla. They could cover a huge market in the three countries. They could fly one weekly flights to popular summer destinations.

You would need two-hour drive from Sarajevo too. I hope that corrupted Wizz Air project will fail before it starts.

It sounds good for Tuzla initially, but is it really? They are charging 1,5 euros per pax and paying certain percentage of Wizz Air fuel.

There is investigation going on and I hope that we will see Tuzla airport CEO and minister of transportation Enver Bijedic answering some question pretty soon since they political party lost the elections and there is nobody anymore to watch their back. It is very well know how much they took and whats the deal.

^ if it is a mess at all.Wizz Air should in any case hold on their Belgrade base,because i dont see people from Serbia taking the bumping ride to Tuzla when BEG offers it in front of their faces.Tuzla still can be succesful with pax from Bosnia and Croatia if they do not open a base in Sarajevo.Because then they really would be sandwiched between SJJ and BEG.

But now it is time to attract some other companies. It is crucial for existence of Tuzla, because of your development rely only on one LCC they start to blackmail airport with huge amount of money. Bigger and bigger every year and after 2-3 years you cannot finance that anymore and in same time you cannot (politically and economically) terminate this „collaboration“ (in meantime you invest in logistics, employ lot of people, open hotels, restaurants, bars, rent'a'car offices, taxis…). It is not unrealistic to say that Tuzla can attract:

IST, 7 flights weekly by Turkish, Pegasus or B&H AirlinesVIE, 4 flights weekly by Austrian or B&H AirlinesARN, 2 flights weekly by Norwegian (if they are allowed to work with another LCC by contract)CGN, 2 flights weekly by Germanwingsat least one charter flight to Greece during summer period (up to that one to Antalya they already have)

If there is any sense in Croatia Airlines management they would opened ZAG-TZL route 3 years ago when TZL was desperate and would finance route. I don't find any problems in 6-7 flights per week in middle day wave. But that ship has sailed like so many others…

Yes, it's fantastic to see them perform so well! I think it also helps that you have public transport from the airport to the city. Line 72 goes through New Belgrade and Bezanija which makes the plane more appealing than the bus!

If I owned low cost airline my next destination in ex-Yu would be OMO. Lots of tourist (pilgrims, Croatian even Montenegro coast), fairly large amount of diaspora from Western Herzegovina, relatively close and with good road to Sarajevo, Eastern Herzegovina. They could even attract some pax from western part of Montenegro. Only then I would try INI which I think suffers mainly from a lot of competition (SKP, SOF etc.) and than to certain extent from the bad infrastructure.

BTW two business class tickets for JU’s two millionth passenger – not a bad, good for her.

To add regarding INI, the only flights they could see from JU is to BEG (maybe in the morning) to offer connections. I know it would be a struggle but if they stuck this long at BNX to make it work I don’t see the reason why they couldn’t do this at INI as well. How I see it is that they are really working on this Trans-Atlantic flights and developing regional network to feed them. I have a feeling that most of the diaspora from Nis and area is in Western Europe and maybe that’s why INI is not a priority for them.

As far as direct flights are concern, Nis people should look at LCCs. There is no way JU will operate any kind of mini hub there, just not enough pax there for that kind of business.

Problem with Nis andTuzla is, that it only makes sense to fly there with an all economy outfit.Air Serbia would only generate losses with sending their business class there.That seats would stay empty and then you have the mess...

Air Serbia's concept is simple - to develop BEG as a HUB. That means that NO flights will ever fly from Nis direct to any city, other than BEG - if that is to ever happen. Flying from Nis direct to any other city, goes against the concept of developing a hub.

It would be interesting to know how much their maintenance business earned. Every profit is good but long term questions remain in my head. How is their core business doing? What % of this profit was due to extremely profitable maintenance business? Also. they are at the tail end of their restructuring, are they hitting their cost cutting, earnings and profit targets as spelled out in the restructuring plan? And probably the most important one is, how is this all going to look when oil prices go north of $120 which will happened eventually for sure.

YU-API is on D Check according to some on skyscrapercity. I don't know for sure, but it makes sense to me. D Check would also be a good time to install WiFi, but I also have not heard it from any real source.

C check, every 18 months or so. If API comes back to BEG in a week or so with a new hump on top, that means sat equipment required for internet access is installed. At that point there would be no need to hide it any more, so I hope Maya will have exciting announcement ready by then!

If it comes back without the hump, I'd hate to be a Debby Downer but that would mean no internet just yet :(

I'm guessing it won't be too expensive. I just flew with Etihad, SYD-AUH. Wifi was only 22 USD for the whole duration of the flight (15 hours). There are also options for 2 hours and 5 hours and when you log out, your time stops, so you can log in multiple times and from multiple devices. Internet speed is excellent. I also found that, if you have internet on your phone through your mobile provider you can also log on the internet or check your emails with international roaming rates. Was really impressed.

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